The first Union flag to wave over
Richmond in four years was raised in 1865 by this famous and effective Union spy. Born
into a prominent Richmond family, Elizabeth Van Lew returned from her schooling in
Philadelphia as an adamant abolitionist determined to fight slavery in the bastion of the
South. "Slave power," she wrote in her diary, "is arrogant, is jealous and
intrusive, is cruel, is despotic." Outspoken and rebellious, she appeared to her
neighbors to be more than a little eccentric and soon became known as "Crazy Bet."
After Virginia seceded and Fort Sumter fell, she
used her reputation for innocuous idiosyncracy as a shield behind which her shrewd and
resourceful mind devised schemes to abet the Union cause from within Richmond. Her first
target was the Confederate Libby Prison, which imprisoned Union captives. Pretending to
make a merely humanitarian gesture, Van Lew brought baskets of food, medicine, and books
to the prisoners. What she brought out would have shocked the guards she learned to charm
and deceive.
Not only did Van Lew help some prisoners escape,
she also gleaned valuable information from various sources inside the prison. Newly
arrived Union prisoners secretly recounted the strength and dispositions of Confederate
troops they had seen on their way from the front to Richmond. Of even more use was
information carelessly conveyed to the "harmless Crazy Bet" by Confederate
guards and by the prison's Confederate commandant, Lieutenant David H.Todd (Mary Todd
Lincoln's half-brother).
She even managed to penetrate the home of
President Jefferson Davis by convincing one of her former servants to secure a position in
the Davis household staff. At first, Van Lew simply mailed the information she retrieved
in letters posted to Federal authorities. As her work continued, her methods grew more
sophisticated. She devised a code involving words and letters that prisoners would
underline in the books she lent them.
Van Lew also sent her household servants--though
she had freed the family's slaves, many of them chose to stay with her--northward carrying
baskets of farm produce. Each basket held some eggs, one of which contained encoded
messages in place of its natural contents. She sent her information directly to Benjamin
Butler as well as to Grant through an elaborate courier system. It was so fast and
effective that General Grant often received flowers still fresh from his spy's large
garden. Grant would later say of her efforts, "You have sent me the most valuable
information received from Richmond during the war."
After the war, President Grant rewarded Van Lew
with a job as postmistress of Richmond, which she held from 1869 to 1877. Although revered
in the North, she was, needless to say, ostracized by her Richmond neighbors. "No one
will walk with us on the street," she wrote, "no one will go with us anywhere;
and it grows worse and worse as the years roll on." Failing to be reappointed
postmistress under Rutherford B. Hayes, she lived on a annuity from the family of a Union
soldier she bad helped in Libby Prison. She died in Richmond, probably in 1900.
Here's a little something that tells a little
about her activities in Richmond: MORE ON CRAZY BET